Robert S. Chang

Centering the Immigrant in the Inter/National Imagination

In this Article, Professors Chang and Aoki examine the relationship between the immigrant and the nation in the complicated racial terrain known as the United States. Special attention is paid to the border which contains and configures the local, the national and the international. They criticize the contradictory impulse that has led to borders becoming increasingly porous to the flows of information, goods and capital while simultaneously constricting when it comes to the movement of certain persons, particularly those of Asian and Latinalo ancestry. The authors examine Monterey Park, California, as one site where there has been a large influx of capital, information, and persons. Centering the immigrant in their analysis allows them to observe the interaction of

Toward an Asian American Legal Scholarship: Critical Race Theory, Post-Structuralism, and Narrative Space

Prelude ........................................... 3 Introduction: Mapping the Terrain ............................. 7 1. The Need for an Asian American Legal Scholarship ........ 11 A. That Was Then, This Is Now: Variations on a Theme .. 11 1. Violence Against Asian Americans ................. 12 2. Nativistic Racism .................................. 15 B. The Model Minority Myth ............................. 18 C. The Inadequacy of the Current Racial Paradigm ........ 25 1. Traditional Civil Rights Work ...................... 25 2. Critical Race Scholarships .......................... 26 Il. Narrative Space ........................................... 28 A. Perspective Matters ................................... 32 B. Resistance to Narrative ................................ 33 C. Epistemological Strategies .............................. 38 1. Arguing in the Rational/Empirical Mode ........... 39 2. Post-Structuralism and the Narrative Turn .......... 44 III. The Asian American Experience: A Narrative Account of Exclusion and Marginalization ............................. 46 A. Exclusion from Legal and Political Participation ........ 49 1. Immigration and Naturalization .................... 49 2. Disfranchisement .................................. 60 B. Speaking Our Oppression into (and out of) Existence ... 63 1. The Japanese American Internment and Redress .... 63 2. The Not So Model Minority ....................... 68 C. The Common Thread .................................. 72 IV. Toward an Asian American Legal Scholarship .............. 74 A. Stage One: Denial ..................................... 76 B. Stage Two: Affirmation ................................ 78 C. Stage Three: Liberation ................................ 81 Coda .......................................................... 82

When Interests Diverge

In this review of Mary Dudziaks important book, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton Univ. Press 2000), Professors Chang and Kwan find the book to provide compelling historical narratives about the intersection of the Cold War and civil rights struggles. Dudziak demonstrates through an amazing array of historical evidence a story that runs counter to the standard narrative of racial sin followed by racial redemption, which helps us to reassess who we are and to be cognizant of the work that remains.

Teaching Asian Americans and the Law: Struggling with History, Identity, and Politics

This brief essay explores the goals and challenges in constructing a course on Asian Americans and the Law. In published form, this essay will be accompanied by a course syllabus.